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5
Virtual Terrain and
Designing Landscapes
I don’t divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one.
—Luis Barragan
5.1 TERRAIN IS MORE THAN JUST DIRT
Our terrain denes us; we are mountain people, coastal dwellers, or plains residents. Terrain can provide our
physical defense or force us to recognize our physical weakness, and throughout the world, sacred places on
our terrain are a source of mythology or spiritual beliefs [1, 2].
From an aerial perspective, a cityscape might appear to be primarily at, but even New York City has
hills, and that terrain overlooks valleys lled by the mighty rivers that surround it. As a desi